


no fear of the gods

by sunshine_states



Series: apocalypse how [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, The Odyssey References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:54:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22502875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshine_states/pseuds/sunshine_states
Summary: Martin's always been clever. Sometimes people even notice.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: apocalypse how [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1570090
Comments: 10
Kudos: 130





	no fear of the gods

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from The Odyssey; the full quote is spoken by Odysseus before he kills the suitors.

When Martin is twelve, his favorite teacher is a tall, gray-eyed Greek woman named Xenia Machanitis. She has the kind of face that might be called _classically beautiful_ , all lines and angles and perfect jawline, and wears aggressively tailored jackets that make her look like a general in tweed. Martin is - not in love with her, that's all wrong, he's not - not in love, exactly. But she reads _The Odyssey_ so passionately that Martin can smell the salt of the sea and the bittersweet heat of ground spices, and for that alone he would follow her to the ends of the earth. 

She keeps him after class one evening. He stands there, twisting his hands together, already feeling too big, too awkward, too _much_ for his own body. Miss Machanitis sits at her desk in the baleful blue light of the January afternoon, grading papers with the unruffled air of a warrior sharpening a sword. 

"Miss Machanitis," Martin begins, once silence has become more awful than speech. "Did I - did I do something wrong?"

She marks Isla Green's final grammatical error with a flourish and looks up. Her gray gaze pins him on the spot like a lance. 

"You lied today," she observes.

Martin goes numb all over, and then cold. "I, ah. I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean."

"You were lying," Miss Machanitis continues implacably, "when you said you don't have a job. You work at the chip shop downtown. You told the owner you were sixteen, which, frankly, is absurd, but he needed the extra pair of hands and so he didn't ask too many questions."

He stares at her. She tilts her head, unsmiling, watching him.

"I," Martin says. Thinks of his mother. "I'm sorry. I -"

She shrugs a shoulder. "I'm not angry with you, Mr. Blackwood. I'm doing you a favor. If I've noticed, then someone else will, too. Run along, now."

Martin tries not to run for the door and manages a brisk, faintly undignified little trot. He's already yanked open the door when her voice stops him.

"And Martin?" She sounds...amused. Indulgent, like she's caught him with his hand in a jar of sweets. "Weave a better lie next time."

He can't look at her. He's struck with the thought, unwarranted and ridiculous, that he might not see a human face if he did. He nods, throws himself through the door, and runs all the way home.

\---

Martin learns. Martin weaves. Martin fakes his CV and Martin spites the Eye and Martin tricks the lonely servant of a lonelier god. Martin becomes Nobody - and then finds, with Jon's hands anchoring his in the fog, that there is one truth he doesn't want to escape from. That's new. That's new and...and really, really good, actually. The next three weeks are better than almost the entire rest of his life up to that point.

Then the world ends. Maybe he should have seen that one coming.

Jon sleeps on the fourth day. Martin is pretty sure his body physically would not allow him to remain awake. He's curled up like a cat in the passenger seat of their ~~stolen~~ borrowed van, twitching a little every now and then, as if to dislodge a bothersome fly. Martin enjoys a brief, vivid fantasy of scooping Jonah Magnus's eyes out with a melon baller. 

He needs to go outside. The thought comes to him so naturally that he is unlocking the car door and stepping out into dew-soaked grass before he thinks, _no._

"No," he says out loud, as his feet carry him down the hill, through flowers that smell of rotting meat and a marsh that stains his socks with oily black water. "Stop! _Stop!_ "

"Stop what?" says Annabelle Cane. She shines like spidersilk in the tarnished moonlight. "They're your feet, Martin."

"Will you _just -_ " Martin snarls and then the words evaporate on his tongue and he shuts his mouth, mute and furious.

"That's better," Annabelle says. "Honestly, Martin, I want to help you, but you're making it rather difficult."

Jon is alone, oh God, Jon is alone and _Annabelle is here -_

"You and Jon have nothing to fear from me," Annabelle says, and Martin thinks - Martin thinks maybe she even believes that. She smiles like something that has looked up _friendly_ in the dictionary and made their best go of it. "We all seek to overthrow the Eye." 

  
"Given you everything you want, though, hasn't he," Martin says. "This world is yours now - why would you help us?"

"The Web likes the world the way it was," Annabelle says simply. "And just between me and you, Jonah Magnus is a prick."

Martin snorts. "No argument here."

"Well, then," she says, pleased, "why shouldn't we ruin his day together?"

She paces towards him. She _skitters,_ she has two eyes and eight, and there is something slick and chitinous about her skin, and Martin knows what she is asking of him.

"We've had our eye on you," she hums, running her knuckles down his cheek. His mum never did that; never ruffled his hair or hugged him when she didn't have to. It feels right, feels _safe_ , even when Martin knows in his bones that Annabelle would wrap him in silk and drain him like a fly if it suited her. "The Mother chooses her servants carefully, Martin, and she doesn't cast them aside once they've served their purpose. There is always, always another way you can be useful to her."

Martin stares at her. "Jon -"

"Will be safe!" Annabelle soothes. "You can make him safe. Don't you want that, Martin? Don't you want Jon to be safe?"

"Yeah," Martin says quietly. "Yeah, I do."

There's a movement over Annabelle's shoulder. Martin meets the cool gray gaze of Xenia Machinitis and then hurriedly looks back at Annabelle, breath stuttering in his throat.

"Well, Martin?" she's saying. "What's it to be?"

Miss Machinitis is holding a spear, but otherwise she looks exactly like she did when he was twelve. She smiles, and it if it isn't Annabelle's uncanny warmth, it isn't a human expression, either.

_Weave a better lie, Martin._

He can't agree to Annabelle's offer. And she won't let him live if she doesn't. So he says,

"I just need him to be okay." He means it. He means it with every fiber of his being. It obliterates all other thought.

"Of course," Annabelle says gently. "And together, we -"

She stops. They both look down at the cheap hunting knife Martin has embedded in her ribs.

"How -" she begins. Her brow wrinkles in confusion. "I didn't hear -"

Martin's hands have already started to shake. He lets go of the knife and Annabelle staggers back, feeling for the handle, a stain of something that is not quite blood spreading from the wound. 

"I was thinking about Jon," he tells her. And then, remembering, "And no, I'm not going to join the Web."

Miss Machinitis makes no sound as she crosses the clearing. She kneels beside Annabelle, who is breathing hard, legs drawn up to her chest. 

"I am sorry," she says, gentle, terrible, "for what was done to you."

Annabelle shakes her head slowly. "I have no idea who you are."

"Of course you don't," sighs Miss Machinitis, smoothing a thumb over her temple, "you never do."

Annabelle shrinks away from her. Keeps shrinking, smaller and smaller, legs and eyes multiplying, all the Web's coy hints played out and made explicit. Miss Machinitis holds her on the tip of one forefinger, examining her thoughtfully. 

"Safe journey, Annabelle Cane," she says at last, and blows the spider into the grass. 

"Are you the Mother of Puppets?" Martin asks, watching her tuck the spear into the crook of her shoulder and shake the dew from the hem of her skirt. His hands are still shaking but his voice, thankfully, is not.

"No," Miss Machinitis says simply. Between one blink and the next she is gone, and Martin is alone in the meadow.

He wipes Annabelle Cane's blood off on the wet grass before getting back in the car. Jon comes awake with a startled shout and the guilty look that means he's been feeding in his sleep. 

"It's just me," Martin says, starting up the car. "Don't worry."

 _You terrible man,_ Miss Machinitis says, fond and familiar, reading to them in that classroom long ago. _Foxy, ingenious, never tired of twists and tricks._

"You're smiling," Jon observes sleepily.

"Yeah," Martin says. "Yeah, I am."

They're an hour out from London, and between there and here, is plotting. Turns out, he's pretty good at that.


End file.
